Technical Field
The present invention relates to a power supply device configured to supply electric power to a vehicle drive motor, and a method of controlling the same.
Related Art
Techniques for enabling power supply devices, which are used in vehicles such as electric vehicles (EV) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEV), to effectively collect electric power regenerated by vehicle drive motors have heretofore been proposed (see Patent Literature 1, for example.)
A power supply device of Patent Literature 1 includes a switch configured to switch between a state where a capacitor and a battery that can store and discharge electric power are connected in series to an inverter and a state where only the battery is connected to the inverter. When a voltage of the capacitor is lower than a predetermined value, regenerated electric power is supplied to both the battery and the capacitor by connecting the battery and the capacitor in series. When the voltage of the capacitor is higher than the predetermined value, the regenerated electric power is supplied only to the battery by connecting the battery only.